Great Reading: Bookmark It!

Volume 28, No. 4, April, 2001

Music and Lyrics Included

Ruth Cox

Barnyard lullaby. Frank Asch.
Simon & Schuster, 1998. $15.00. 0-689-81363-5. Ages Birth 8. Animal mothers sing their babies to sleep, but only the little ones understand the words. Lyrics for each of the animals are included.

Hush songs: African American lullabies. Joyce Carol Thomas.
Hyperion, 2000. $16.49. 0-7868-0562-5. Ages Birth 8. Ten lullabies, which reflect the African American culture, including three songs that Thomas composed.

Lullabies: An illustrated songbook. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Harcourt Brace, 1997. 0-15-201728-3. $23.00. All ages. Famous works of art accompany thirty-seven traditional nursery songs such as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."

Peter and the wolf. Vladimir Vagin.
Scholatic, 2000. $15.95. 0-590-38608-5. Ages 5-10. A retelling of the orchestral fairy tale of a young boy who, with the help of a bird, captures the wolf.

Summertime from Porgy and Bess. George Gershwin, DuBose and Dorothy Heyward, and Ira Gershwin.
Simon & Schuster, 1999. $16.95. 0-689-80719-8. Ages 5-10. To the lyrics of "Summertime" from the folk opera Porgy and Bess, Mike Wimmers deeply colored oil paintings depict a day in the life of an early 20th century African American family.

Ruth Cox is assistant professor in the School of Education at the University of Houston-Clear Lake in Houston, Texas. She can be reached at Cox@cl.uh.edu.